Apex Book Company has announced the launch of a new imprint, Violet Lichen Books, to be headed by Editor-in-Chief Marissa van Uden.

Violet Lichen Books will publish novella-length horror and dark fiction, focusing on New Weird, Weird, folk horror, eco-horror, and eco-science-fiction. It fully embraces the strange and uncanny, and its books aim to leave readers feeling a little changed and disquieted, as if they have just emerged from under a strange spell. Violet Lichen Books is especially interested in works by marginalized and under-represented authors.

Apex Book Company has distribution via Diamond Books Distributors. It has published award-winning titles such as Plague Birds by Jason Sanford (Nebula Award Finalist for Best Novel and Philip K Dick Award Winner), Danged Black Thing by Eugen Bacon (Philip K Dick Award finalist 2023), and other iconic titles such as Rosewater by Tade Thompson, theThe Apex Book of World SF series, and cult hit Greener Pastures by Michael Wehunt.

Violet Lichen Editor-in-Chief Marissa van Uden is a New Zealander and nature-lover who now lives in a cabin in the woods of Vermont. She is a professional manuscript editor with more than fifteen years experience, a staff interviewer at Apex Magazine, and an anthologist (Apex Magazine’s Strange Microfiction series and The Off-Season: An Anthology of Coastal New Weird – forthcoming). Her fiction has appeared in Vastarian, Dark Matter Magazine, Zero Dark Thirty, and Los Suelos.

She loves atmospheric and thought-provoking fiction that intertwines a fascination of the natural world with horror and dread, and that explores how individuals interconnect with their communities, other species, and whole ecosystems. Her goal is to work with authors who have a strong attachment to the themes, people, or places they’re writing about, and who sling their dark tales straight from the heart.

[Based on a press release.]